120th years of Jozef Mackiewicz's birth

Salvete Omnes,

Ukraine is in flames -  outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian soldiers and militiamen are still defending parts of the city of Mariupol - they are heroes of this Ruso-Ukrainian war.  -  do let the peace return. Ukrainian refugees in Poland are still growing(more than 2,3 million in 47 days!!), and I daresay soon the Poles will become overwhelmed without help from USA and EU.

                                                                                                   +++++++++++

Jozef Mackiewicz, born April 1, 1902AD, was one of the most important Polish writers and publicists during the XX century, but he is rather  unknown in Poland proper.
Mostly because he was a stalwart anti-Communist and Polish Communist through education and  media, prior to 1990 AD, sought to remove Mackiewicz's writings from the popular literary and political discourse.
And in the years from the so called transition of 1989-90AD , in the court of public opinion shaped by a liberal Polish daily paper Gazeta Wyborcza and post-Communist liberal world,  his work was deemed  persona non grata, and consequently many narratives were woven about this Lithuanian Polish patriot and anti-Communist, humanist and libertarian. His writings were and still are marginalized in Poland, and it did not help that his literary works and copyrights  were, rather  strangely, awarded by courts not to his daughter Halina Mackiewicz but to a total stranger Nina Karsov-Schechter. 

So this month  we celebrate the 120th anniversary of Mackiewicz's birth, he was born in Sankt Petersburg, Russian Empire, in 1902AD, since Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was  partitioned in 1795AD and Poles were widely spread out across Europe and Americas etc.  He is still famous for this reporting on genocide as it occurred- the Katyn Forrest Massacre, and the Ponary Massacre. But he was a prolific writer, continuing his writing all the way to his end, essays and novels, most of them on political issues of his times.

 During his late teens he became a volunteer cavalryman, for  in 1919AD, during the Polish-Bolshevik war he volunteered and served, along with his brother Stanislaw and many other relatives, for the remainder of the conflict as a cavalryman under Jerzy Lupaszka Dambrowski,   one of the most  famous 'zagonczyks' (cavalry raider) of that war - nota bene there were two more famous raiders from  Kresy/ Polish Borderlands during this period:   Stanislaw Bulak-Balachowicz (the last 'Kmicic') and Feliks Jaworski.

Being a soldier of Dambrowski brother s' unit, Jozef  Mackiewicz took part in the famous and legendary withdrawal/partisan raid of the Vilnius Special Command of the Polish Armed Forces, odyssey of heroic proportions that took them  from the city of Wilno (Vilnus), across Polesie and Lithuania and western Belarus to Grodno & Brest Litovsk, now in Belarus in 1919AD. He took part in the 1919 campaigning and then joined the 211th Uhlan regiment for the 1920AD campaign.

During the hot days of the summer and fall of 1920 he fought in the northern front, against the Bolshevik cavalry of Gai Khan. He wrote about his experiences in his famous and quite autobiographical novel 'Lewa Wolna' (Free Left, 1965 ). In one of his novels he described the odyssey and tragedy of the Pontic Cossack hosts that threw their lot with Nazi Germany, crossed from the Volga-Don steppes into southern Europe as part of the multi-ethnic force supporting Hitler's Wehrmacht, then in 1945 surrendered to the British in Italy and were betrayed into the Stalin's hands by the British gentlemen and officers who had given their word to do otherwise. Nota bene Polish general Anders got  the Allies to exclude the SS Galizien Division Ukrainians accepted as Polish citizens and most of them were able to emigrate to Canada and UK after the war during the 1947-8 or so. 

Ad rem, Mackiewicz, along with some uhlans from 211th uhlan regiment still under Dambrowski,  was taken prisoner by the Lithuanians during the October 1920AD - he was released from his captivity due to the intervention of his uncle, who was in the Lithuanian army at that time. 
He was released from the army and eventually became a writer  living in Wilno (Vilnius, then in Polish 2nd Republic) after the 1919-22 war, worked for his brother Stanislaw's newspaper, survived the Soviet and German occupation, left Wilno for Warsaw n 1944, and then in 1945AD  made over to the American zone and lived for the remainder of this years in  Germany. 

He wrote a lot, and among his writings and statements he coined this phrase-  only the truth is interesting.

Valete 

Franz Roubaud - Caucasus equestrian

Salvete Omnes,

Franz Roubaud - when young a disciple and later member  of Jozef Brandt's circle of painters in Munich, Bavarian Kingdom - was a prolific Russian painter.
Perhaps most famous for his Borodino 1812 Panorama project, he was a prolific equestrian painter, especially painting the Caucasus Mountains region and the ancient peoples who lived and fought and bred horses there.

From Wiki Commons gallery we can get good quality images of maestro Roubaud's canvases depicting the horse people of the most mysterious mountains that divide Asia and Europe in the south.

Valete

Sarmatian stela from Temryuk Museum

Salvete Omnes.
a short entry - in a summer style one may say - the Archaeology News Network I read today that Salzburg Museum, Austria, will return to Russia 'a trove of ancient[...] artefacts plundered during the World War II.'
The ancient treasures were taken from the Temryuk Archeological Museum during the German occupation of the Taman Peninsula 1942-43AD. Perhaps some Austrian German officer, being part of the Third Reich conquering armies (Austria being the most Nazi of all the German lands during the Hitler's rule), 'conquered' these artefacts from the archaeological museum.
It took oh, 70 odd years to finally return these treasures to Russian Federation.
I am not sure if you remember but the Nazi Germans performed systematic, with the strictest scientific approach one may say, looting of cultural objects from private collections and museums in German-occupied Poland during 1939-45.
One of the artefact shows a horseman, and I think this a Sarmatian of the Bosporan Kingdom.

In many respects it is similar to the funerary stelae (Ic BC -Ic AD) from Panticapaeum in Crimea, that are on display in the Odessa Museum, Ukraine.


 
The country- Taman Peninsula and Kuban steppe to the south - over there in Russia has been the Tatar and Cossack country - it should come as no surprise that the original Cossacks were Tatars in the Genoese service during the colonial Genoese empire of the north Pontic shores  the XIV-XV centuries.
 
Wiki commons contains a large number of photos from the 'ethno-turist' center 'Ataman' that is 'recreating' a Don/Kuban Cossack  stanitsa (village). The place appear to be located in   Taman.  In some of the pictures there are modern Cossacks doing dzhigitovka.



Valete